Jennifer Foster

I made brief mention in my column for this weekend of a civil lawsuit in federal court involving Macon County Sheriff David Warren, VictoryLand owner Milton McGregor and McGregor’s Macon County Greyhound Park.

Let’s back up: Two and a half years ago, when I was a full-time employee at the Opelika-Auburn News, I came to work one day in July to find a white envelope on my desk. It had been mailed to the newspaper from somewhere in Tuskegee, and it bore no return address. The label with the newspaper’s information was computer-generated.

I opened the envelope to find a copy of this lawsuit. No note was attached.

I can only surmise that someone was tipping us that the suit was out there. It had been filed the previous December, in 2006, but to my knowledge, our newspaper hadn’t covered it.

I made plans to go get whatever paperwork I could on it from the court. But we ended up having a meeting that afternoon, and I ended up going on an unexpected medical leave the next day. To make a long story short, my job no longer existed when I returned from medical leave, so I never got a chance to get back on the story.

I have periodically wondered about that lawsuit. I’ve had a couple of conversations with folks in the intervening months and years about it. I assumed it had been dismissed in a summary judgment since I hadn’t heard anything about it since. But it’s just been this week that I’ve managed to get the paperwork and the time together to check it out.

Circumstance is a funny thing.

According to a clerk with whom I spoke Thursday, the lawsuit wasn’t dismissed. It’s still active—and it’s going to trial this summer.

The clerk said that William Keith Watkins, the judge in the case, ordered last week that the trial, originally set to start in March, will begin on June 21. The move was necessary, Watkins said in his order, due to the “length and complexity” of the issues involved. Watkins decided it needed to be “specially set” in its own term, so as not to crowd other things on the docket.

So what are the issues?

The plaintiffs are a prospective competitor for VictoryLand called Lucky Palace LLC and 17 non-profit organizations in Macon County that, presumably, are not currently benefitting from the charity bingo licenses VictoryLand holds. Warren, McGregor and the Greyhound Park are the defendants.

According to the third amended complaint, which is the version of the suit I received:

This complaint includes claims: (1) against Defendant Warren, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, for violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution; (2) against all Defendants, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, for a conspiracy to deprive the Charities of the equal protection of the laws; (3) against all Defendants for violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”), (4) against all defendants for a conspiracy to violate RICO, (5) against Defendants McGregor and VictoryLand for tortious interference with contractual or business relations, and (6) against Defendants McGregor and VictoryLand for tortious interference with prospective business relationships.

The suit goes on to allege that “at least since the fall of 2003, Defendants ... have engaged in the improper influence of a public servant in connection with the promulgation and amendment of the rules and regulation governing electronic bingo in Macon County” and that McGregor and VictoryLand “through unlawful influence, caused Defendant Warren to arbitrarily promulgate unreasonable rules and regulations for the operation of bingo in Macon County that allowed only one entity—VictoryLand—to operate bingo games.

“Not only were the original rules and regulations a product of the influence and designed to favor only Victoryland, but, through the continued influence of the Enterprise, the rules and regulations were amended twice to ensure that attempts of competitors to enter the market would be thwarted,“ the suit reads.

Warren and McGregor are vigorously defending themselves against the allegations. According to the clerk, Warren, McGregor and Fred Gray Jr., McGregor’s business attorney who is also mentioned in the suit but is not named as a defendant, are represented individually or collectively by attorneys from no fewer than five separate law firms. In addition, she said, some 500 documents have already been filed in the case—and some of them are under seal.

I questioned her about the kinds of documents that were sealed, pointing out that one of the defendants is an elected official and as such, there should be particular care to providing as much transparency as possible. She said it was likely that the documents were sealed because they reveal information that would be otherwise protected by attorney-client privilege.

It is possible—even likely, perhaps—that the complaint itself has been further amended since I received my copy of it. The next time I’m in Montgomery, I’m going to swing by the kiosk at the courthouse, take a look at the paperwork and get the most updated copy of the suit.

In any event, this trial will be as notable for what is revealed in discovery as for what the verdict will be. It will get at the heart of the haphazard licensure process that Alabama uses to funnel a portion of gambling money to local charities—and the process by which local sheriffs, who are empowered to grant those licenses, make the decisions about who will have and who will have not.

The case is 3:06-cv-01113-WKW-CSC.

Pre-trial starts May 21.